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Monday, July 10, 2017

Adults Behaving Badly

It
was a little over thirty years ago that the late Whitney Houston released a
single entitled "The Greatest Love of All". The single, which topped the Billboard Charts in the spring of
1986 was a song all about finding the best within yourself and how learning to
love yourself truly is the greatest love of all. It was a brilliant song with a lovely message, and one that still
holds true in 2017. Or, at least I
would like to think so anyway.

I think right from the very first line of that song, it packs a powerful
punch. The song opens with the line
"I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead
the way". Isn't that quite
profound? And keep in mind that Whitney
was only 22 years old when that song was released. Unfortunately, we all know how her life ended, but back in that
time period she was filled with endless optimism and belief that the would can
be a great place if we teach future generations well.

Alas,
I don't think Ms. Houston was all that prepared for the brouhaha that has made
up the year 2017 so far.

Is
it just me, or does it seem like more and more adults are behaving badly these
days? It seems as though there are new
stories popping up on the Internet and on local news broadcasts about how
poorly adults have been acting. People
getting into road rage incidents because someone accidentally cut them
off. People lunging at fast food
workers because someone accidentally forgot to put pickles on their Big
Macs. Customers reducing cashiers to
tears because they tried to use a coupon that expired three years ago. What's worse is that many of these people
will be in the presence of impressionable young children who will grow up
thinking that it is okay to treat people in that manner.

News
flash. It's not. It never was. It should never be.

Now,
I think back to when I was a kid, and it seemed as though we had more positive
role models to look up to. I basically
grew up in the land of the 1980s schmatzy sitcom. We had idols like Henry Warnimont from "Punky Brewster",
and Philip Drummond from "Diff'rent Strokes", and Heathcliff Huxtable
from...

...yeah,
you know what, scratch that last one off the list for very obvious reasons.

But
aside from the fictional representations we had in my childhood years, our real
life adults were supposed to be role models, and for the most part I think they
succeeded. (Well, aside from that evil
teacher I had, but I've talked about her enough.) I mean, most of my teachers taught me how to respect other
people. People were respectful to
cashiers and service providers and very rarely had a cross word to say about
them. Even our politicians didn't seem
to have that many scandals when I was a kid (well, aside from Clinton's
dalliance with a White House intern and Dan Quayle not knowing how to spell the
word potato).

How
times have changed. And not in a good
way.

I mean, how in the world can we teach our children to be decent people and be
positive role models for them when you have a world leader who continues to
make offensive tweets to anybody and everybody he chooses.

Yes, I'm talking about Donald Trump. A
man whose promises that he has made to his country seem to be taking a backseat
to his sexist, derogatory, and immature tweets. I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican. A world leader should NOT be poking the
hornet's nest at a time in which his country has never been more divided. And frankly, Donald Trump is at an age where
he really should know better than to act like that in front of the public, and
I have absolutely no problem telling him that he has all the emotional
intelligence of a two-year-old. At the
rate he is going right now, even if he comes up with some brilliant ideas to
fix the American economy, his tirades on Twitter will be all that people will
remember him for.

What
I think is even more deplorable is that because Trump gets away with saying
some of the most idiotic things on social media, it has allowed similar minded
people to do exactly the same thing. I
can't believe the amount of racist comments, sexist comments, slurs against the
LGBTQ community, and outright threats to people who identify as Muslim on
various pages on social media. It has
gotten so bad that I've had to block all political posts on my Facebook page
because I can't stand the nastiness coming out of people's mouths...or, I guess
in this case, it would be the words that are typed out from people's fingers.

It
also makes me realize that social media is one of those places where people are
always showing who they really are.
Even before social media, the Internet itself is a place where even the
most careful spy can't be completely anonymous.

Back
in the old days of the Internet when many of us used screennames to post on
message boards and chat rooms there was a little bit of a mystery as most of us
didn't reveal our real names at the time.
But you could get a sense of who a person really was based on how they
wrote on these boards. Usually, people
develop "keyboard courage" and write a whole bunch of things that
they would NEVER say on the streets or in public, and when they do that, they
show people a true sense of what kind of a person they are - whether it is good
or bad.

I
think of social media to be the same thing, only without the anonymity of a
fake name (unless you are running a sockpuppet account). I know for a fact that some people I've seen
on Facebook act one way in reality, and a completely different way on social
media. And in many of those cases, the
personality they assume on Facebook is the ugly side of them. The one that feels justified to slag off of
a woman in a bikini because they feel she doesn't have the body to wear
one. The one who purposely makes racist
comments about celebrities and former U.S. President Barack Obama simply
because they have the right to "free speech". The one that posts memes that purposely try
to humiliate someone else because they feel they have the right to.

People who are adults and who should know better.

What
sort of message are we telling the generation after us when adults behave
badly? That it's justified to bully
someone? That it's okay to slag off of
someone who isn't "perfect"?
That it's okay to deny rights and services to people based on their skin
colour, sexual preference, or religious background? In no universe should this ever take place.

We
are NOT given the right to "free speech" to purposely harm other
people. We are given the right to
"free speech" to make the world a better place. To challenge ideas that are outdated and
closed-minded. To teach our children
and grandchildren the difference between right and wrong. That's what free speech is to me. And it's amazing how many adults either
don't understand what that right is, or abuse it to the point where it should
be revoked.

Parents.
Teachers. Public figures. Politicians. We all have a stake in how we want the generations after us to
behave. Don't you think we should do
our best to make sure we present ourselves in the best way possible?

After all. When adults behave
badly...it just sets the tone for how the offspring of said adults will turn
out. And frankly we already have enough
jerks in this world as it is.